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Will Competitive Gaming Take Away Our Single Player Fun? - Garrett Fuller - MMORPG.com
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
Will Competitive Gaming Take Away Our Single Player Fun? - Garrett Fuller - MMORPG.com
MMOs have always been a ground for creativity. All of the competitive games you see today: SMITE, Overwatch, League of Legends, and so forth have their roots in MMORPGs. This style of game has now become an esport and more investors are getting involved each year. You hear stories of EA shutting down studios over single player games, and begin to ask, are my solo adventures coming to an end?
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"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey
In all honesty, you can't really count Bethesda as the 'savior' since they've pretty much re-released Skyrim like 4-5 times. The only real reason they aren't capitalizing on stuff like this is because multiplayer isn't really their thing unlike EA/Activision or even Ubisoft. They make story driven single player games which are arguably better than the aforementioned so its not surprising that they will continue to do. Lets not forget they are trying to do their post-transnational garbage as well by charging for mods for a game that were free until they realized they could get enough money for them
Epic Music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAigCvelkhQ&list=PLo9FRw1AkDuQLEz7Gvvaz3ideB2NpFtT1
https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary_msdos?&sort=-downloads&page=1
Kyleran: "Now there's the real trick, learning to accept and enjoy a game for what it offers rather than pass on what might be a great playing experience because it lacks a few features you prefer."
John Henry Newman: "A man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault."
FreddyNoNose: "A good game needs no defense; a bad game has no defense." "Easily digested content is just as easily forgotten."
LacedOpium: "So the question that begs to be asked is, if you are not interested in the game mechanics that define the MMORPG genre, then why are you playing an MMORPG?"
At the moment E-sport games are trendy and so there will be a lot of them made. It is not unlike when the larger pubslishers noticed Wows popularity in 2005.
There will be another trend in a couple of years taking over the torch and while they will still make E-sport friendly games after that it will be less of them.
Singleplayer games will not go away and some variant will eventually be the latest thing that everyone tries to copy, they are just not the hot thing at the moment.
And I honesty think the current trend will turn soon now, it felt it was on the downslide until Overwatch breathed new life into it but making new as successful games as Lol and OW will not be easy, and when a bunch of them have failed EA and the rest will try to copy whatever is newer and successful instead.
In a perfect world game designers would ignore whatever game is popular at the time and give us something new and fun but those publishers are too big and uncreative to do that.
Now to the chief compliant, the fact that it may do away with your single player experience in a MMORPG.. please make that happen yesterday. If you are playing the game as a single player then you aren't playing a MMORPG. Please, go back to your xbox on your couch and continue to be isolated in your gaming loneliness.
We once bought a box, now we buy that and then sign up to a pay steam.
This is not true, just came here to point it out. LoL roots comes down to DotA, and DOTA is based in War3 and has nothing to do with WoW or any other MMORPG.
Writers should spend more time talking about good games and less time repeating company talking points.
Get real, while the percentage might be down there stilll are plenty of singleplayer games being made and that is not counting mobile games where a very high percentage is singleplayer.
As for MMOs I don't think we had a higher percentage of solocontent ever.
That's what they are salty about. Their multiplayer gargabe still sells microtransactions, but their single player garbage doesn't.
The best part of all this is that the best single player games are made by other companies, not by any of these "games as a service-lootbox to the throat" companies.
Between Steam, GoG, and the last 8 generations of consoles + handhelds i have enough games for a life time and still have to buy many more. And the majority are better than the crap these few companies put out lately anyway, so their games as a service can die in a hole. I'll spend my money where it's deserved.
TL;DR: Make good games or gtfo. Its now even more evident that these publishers are just wasting the talent of so many developers that could be making great games with other companies.
It was truly an amazing experience, I'm sure they would have taken it over in one of the remaining offices. If they haven't, I'm betting it wasn't even meeting their expectations. Heck, I'm thinking they would have released it if it was even meeting average expectations. (if only to recoup some the development costs)
They also released Prey, Evil Within 2 and Wolfenstein 2 this year. 3 quality single player games. I'd consider them to be someone keeping single player alive. I also don't really care for them doing paid mods. They don't affect the old mods at all and as long as it stays that way, they can do what they want.
Some indie companies have already shown it is possible to do both (gameplay and graphics) and do well as a small team. Best recent example is Ninja Theory with Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice.
I agree that a lot of people prefer eye candy than actually good gameplay. Paying for eye candy over gameplay has slowly been molding the industry the same way paying for lootbox/MTX has been. People dismiss both as "its their money" but they ignore the bigger picture and now we see the trainwreck approaching as a result of those actions. When enough people spend money in the wrong things, the whole market take notice and go the wrong way to chase that money.
Those are the bad games these companies make. The best single player experiences don't boil down to mmo-like task collection gameplay.
If Disney hadn't stepped on their necks you can bet your ass the MTX would still be active in EASWBF2 no matter how much noise we made, because the sound of CHA-CHING will always be louder.
I don't blame anyone for buying into this stuff either, it's a shortcut, or a fancy outfit they can assemble that others can't, or even an awesome looking mount. It's a way to feel like you're ahead without having to dedicate the time you used to in older multiplayer games. No one thinks about how they are doing damage to the overall genre they love, and I would never expect them to. I never did, but I sure as hell am now.
I'm looking for a game where players are encouraged to create interesting backgrounds for their characters, and play them according to those personal attributes even if it detracts from doing everything to level up as fast as possible. Where players use the chat option to have their characters talk in character. Where missions have variety, and require teams of characters with distinct abilities. Etc.
Games like Skyrim, Zelda Breath of the Wild, Mario Galaxy and Horizon Zero Dawn prove that there is still a huge market for solid single player only experiences. I love multiplayer games but there is simply nothing like Zelda BOTW to be experienced in any multiplayer game.